I found Julie Kozerski’s Half gallery yesterday, and can’t stop thinking about it. [Definitely NSFW - nudity.]

Her images of her post-weightloss body are harrowing. Beautiful, but different.

It makes me think about the pressure we put on women to be perfect. What does perfection mean?

Julie lost half her body weight, but in doing so has been left with what could be seen as half a body.

I have fought a war with my body for my entire life.

Not because it’s sick, or doesn’t work as it should, or has failed me, or was incomplete to begin with, but because I feel that societal pressure that tells me I’m too big to be good enough.

It’s the same pressure that makes me feel like I’m not taken seriously.

It’s the same pressure that makes me feel like I should be ashamed of my body.

It’s the same pressure that makes me hurt when a group of teenage boys I don’t know yell at me in public and call me a ‘fat slut’.

Julie’s photos help me to reconcile the idea that it’s not always greener on the other side, and that all of us wear perfect/imperfect bodies.

I hate my body // it’s just a shell for my soul // and these rhymes will live long // after my bell has been tolled.